Amy Kuperinsky 
The top movie on Netflix has New Jersey Roots. Kevin Hart’s 72 Hours, the bachelor party comedy occupying the top spot on the streamer, stars Hart and members of the Saturday Night Live cast and was filmed in several New Jersey counties, from the Palisades down to the Shore. Read on to learn about Kevin Hart’s 72 Hours movie and its connection to New Jersey.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images (via Netflix)
About the Movie
Kevin Hart plays Joe Nixon, a 40-year-old marketing professional. He’s at a crossroads in both his career and his relationship when he suddenly receives a barrage of raunchy texts after being mistakenly added to a group chat for a bachelor weekend being planned by a group of 20-somethings. Tickled by the exchange, he throws them $200 for their party in Miami, then has an idea.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images (via Netflix)
Joe’s boss is hounding him about how he doesn’t have a good handle on appealing to Gen Z in his promotional pitch deck for a brand. If he doesn’t think of something soon, he may lose out on a promotion and his job. Joe’s answer: why not convince these kids to invite him to their Miami bachelor weekend so he can watch how they operate and secretly film video for his liquor brand proposal? They’re weirded out at first, but they accept, especially when Joe offers to significantly upgrade their accommodations to a mansion-style home.
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SNL stars Marcello Hernández (Nick), Ben Marshall (Hunter) and Kam Patterson (Freshman) play the friends of groom-to-be Mason Gooding (Mason), while Oscar nominee Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) plays Joe’s significant other Jennifer, a surgeon who is fed up with his inability to commit and seal the deal with a proposal. Emmy-nominated Trenton native Zach Cherry (Dylan George in Severance) plays Barry, Joe’s No. 2 at work.
Moments of gross-out humor follow as Joe manages one party foul after another. He delivers a spectacularly bad Tony Montana impression when adopting a persona he calls “Ricardo Montana,” thanks to his reintroduction to cocaine. He also rents a home that belongs to a Miami drug lord and emerges from the man’s personal summer wardrobe looking like a “shorter Pitbull.” That’s not the only thing he does to enrage a crew of gangsters, including Jaze, a character played by Michael Mando, aka Nacho Varga from Better Call Saul. Look for cameos from Katt Williams and Mike Epps and for Oscar nominee Andy Garcia to make an appearance as the calamitous party weekend comes to an end.
The NJ Connection
72 Hours, released July 24 on Netflix, spent approximately $55 million filming in New Jersey, per the state Economic Development Authority. Jersey stands in for Miami in the Hart-produced movie, though the cast filmed in Florida, too.
The production came to Bergen County at Palisades Interstate Park’s picnic area in Alpine. In Hudson County, Hart and company filmed at a private home in Hoboken and several spots in Jersey City: Liberty Landing Marina and Liberty State Park, along with the Van Vorst Park neighborhood. The movie also filmed at Mile End Studios in Kearny, while a private home in Long Branch served as a luxe Miami bachelor party house. The crew could also be seen at The Avenue A Club in Newark, BarCode Entertainment Complex in Elizabeth, and Opulence, an event space in Rahway.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images (via Netflix)
When the movie was filming in New Jersey in 2025, the production put out a series of casting calls for extras, including one looking for locals who own luxury cars like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Maseratis. But the New Jersey connection goes deeper than that.
The movie started with a script from Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the screenwriters behind the 2004 New Jersey classic Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. They both grew up in Randolph and know a little something about writing a buddy comedy set around a series of escalating troubles. They’re also known for co-creating the popular Karate Kid revival Cobra Kai, which surged when the show moved to Netflix during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jon Hurwitz, NJ Native. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images (via Netflix)
It took nearly a decade of 72 Hours being stuck in “development hell,” including many changes and rewrites — Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows also signed on as writers — for the film to finally be made. Now Hurwitz and Schlossberg, who also served as producers, are toasting the film’s success.
“One of the beautiful things about Hollywood is that good ideas never truly die,” Jon Hurwitz recently wrote in an Instagram post. “Some projects come together fast. Others can take forever. But it’s always a miracle when something gets made and a blessing when people actually watch and enjoy it.”
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